About Your Carts
Currently, 160,000 single-family homes are in the three-cart curbside recycling program serviced with a fully automated collection system. Plans are currently underway to expand curbside recycling to the remaining 20,000 homes that are on manual, refuse-only collection routes. These areas are in pockets of neighborhoods around O‘ahu which were not accessible by the automated collection truck, and will be serviced in what’s called a “semi-automated” system. More information to come.
Your property should have a complement of three carts for sorting your waste – gray for refuse, green for green waste, and blue for mixed recyclables. Additional carts are available to accommodate larger generating households.
GRAY CART
FOR
REFUSE
BLUE CART
FOR
MIXED RECYCLABLES
GREEN CART
FOR
GREEN WASTE
Collection Schedule
Your refuse and recycling carts are serviced on one of these schedules: Monday/Thursday, Tuesday/Friday or Wednesday/Saturday. One collection day is for refuse in the gray cart and the other is for recycling pickup, alternating weekly between the green and blue carts. In some areas, the first collection day is for recycling and second day for refuse. In other areas it is the reverse. Please see the specific collection schedule for your area and a monthly calendar showing alternating weekly schedules.
Missed Cart Collection
A cart may have been blocked by a parked car, too bulky or heavy, contain the wrong type of material or uncollectible for some other reason. Improperly prepared or inaccessible refuse will be picked up on your next collection day when the reason for non-collection has been corrected. If you believe your cart was missed, click REPORT A MISSED PICK UP to contact your local collection yard for assistance.
Additional Cart Options
If you have the 3-cart collection system and your property consistently generates more material than will fit into the carts each collection period, you may be eligible for additional carts. There is no charge for additional carts. Carts are provided for long term use only. Properties are limited to no more than five carts total, comprised of the basic set of three–blue/green/gray–plus two of any color.
- Additional green carts are issued to properties based solely on size. Your property must be at least 10,000 square feet to qualify for a second green cart and 15,000 square feet for a third. Properties in Waiahole, Waikane, Kahalu‘u, Manoa, Nu‘uanu, and Kaneohe mauka of Kamehameha Highway, which have higher than average rainfall, must be at least 8,000 square feet to qualify for a second green cart and 12,000 square feet for a third. No exceptions will be made.
- Additional blue carts are issued to properties consistently generating an excess amount of recyclable material. You must be compacting your recyclables and sorting properly without bagging.
- If you have a small (64-gallon) blue cart, the city also offers the opportunity to swap for a larger (94-gallon) cart. Cart swaps follow the same rules as requesting an additional blue cart.
- Additional gray carts are only issued to properties with consistently high volumes of non-recyclable trash. To determine if you qualify for a second gray cart, city workers will monitor your trash.
Requests for additional carts will not be accepted from October 1, 2024, to January 31, 2025, due to increased holiday service needs. The public may request additional carts starting February 1, 2025.
If you need to request a cart repair or if you have a new home request, please contact our office at (808) 768-3200 or collection@honolulu.gov .
Gray Cart Monitoring Process
Additional gray carts are only issued to properties with consistently high volumes of non-recyclable trash.
Before you request monitoring for a second gray cart, please ensure your property is placing all acceptable recyclables in the blue cart, green waste in the green cart, and compacting the trash going into the gray cart as much as possible.
Mass: At least half (3-4 additional bags of trash) a cart of extra refuse beyond what can fit compacted into the existing gray cart every week of monitoring.
Acceptable recyclables that go in the blue cart include:
- Newspapers
- Corrugated cardboard (no flat board)
- Office paper
- Paper bags
- Glass bottles and jars (empty and clean – no lids)
- All metal cans (including canned good cans)
- Plastic containers with a number 1 or 2 recycling symbol (empty and clean – no lids)
Green waste that goes in the green cart includes:
- Grass clippings
- Leaves
- Branches
- Hedge trimmings
- Fruit and vegetable
- Palm fronds
- Natural Christmas trees (no ornaments or flocked trees)
No Temporary Trash: All trash during the monitoring period should be part of regular generation
- No party trash
- No freezer or pantry cleanout trash
- No large Styrofoam
- Other temporarily produced trash
No inert materials: Any type of inert material should not be disposed of in your regular trash
- Dirt
- Rock
- Hollow tile
- Brick
- Sand
- Gravel
- Concrete
To confirm your property generates high volumes of non-recyclable trash beyond what the single gray refuse cart can handle, the city must monitor your trash.
Here’s how monitoring works: After being approved for monitoring, you will be added to the waitlist for your region.
You may have been provided a start date when you requested monitoring. If you were, fill your gray cart as normal and place the excess trash in plastic bags a few feet away from your gray cart on the date provided. Monitoring will continue on your collection day unless you are notified otherwise, so repeat the process until you are notified that your monitoring has been completed.
If an appointment was not set for you to begin monitoring when you called, when it is your turn for monitoring, a refuse supervisor will call you to begin monitoring. After receiving the call, continue to fill your gray cart as normal and you will be instructed to place any excess trash in plastic bags a few feet away from your gray cart on your refuse collection day. Gray carts and extra bags of trash will need to be set out before 6 am on your collection days.
When undertaking monitoring, refuse personnel will check both the trash inside and outside the cart for three things:
- To ensure the trash in the cart is properly compacted and the extra bags will not fit in the cart
- To ensure you generated a sufficient amount of trash
- To ensure there are no recyclables, green waste, temporary or inert materials in your trash
Your extra bags of trash will be collected during monitoring. If you do not produce sufficient extra trash weekly, you will not pass monitoring and will not receive an additional gray cart. To ensure that you produce sufficient extra trash, monitoring may take up to four weeks to complete once the process starts. If even a single recyclable or other unacceptable waste item is found in your trash by the refuse personnel during monitoring, you will fail monitoring and will be denied a second gray cart. The monitoring process is strict to encourage the proper use of all three carts and to verify regular excess trash generation.
If you do not pass monitoring, you will receive a call or denial letter in the mail. You will not be able to request monitoring again for one year following denial. No exceptions will be made.
Any extra trash can be taken to the city’s free convenience centers and transfer stations, but please do not use these options during monitoring. Find drop-off locations and hours of operation at www.honolulu.gov/opala. For questions, call (808) 768-3200.
If you meet the qualifications and would like to request monitoring, please call (808) 768-3200.